


Old Friends

by HolmesianDeduction



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Ann Smiley - Freeform, Gen, Miniature Character Study, The Circus - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:38:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolmesianDeduction/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George Smiley, Peter would likely say, was old friends with the darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Friends

             Some people were of the opinion that the worst thing to ever happen to George Smiley was Ann Smiley. Others were of the opinion that that title belonged to the day that he was forced out of the Circus, either for the first or second time. In reality, it was neither of these that marked the darkest period in Smiley’s life, and if asked, he might not be able to precisely say what did. Ann came and went as she pleased – it was a fact of life, he might say. And the Circus has always been and likely always will be fickle in its affections – this too was a fact of life for George Smiley.

             So no answer from George.

             If asked, Peter Guillam would dismiss the question as a stupid one at best. Darkness, he might respond – if he was in a rare, poetic mood, was an old friend to George Smiley. They had an arrangement, he supposed, the darkness and George. In many ways, they were symbiotic even. His entire life, or at the very least most of it, had been spent both serving the darkness – the murky motives and operations of his superiors, and then of his masters at Whitehall once he made his return to the Circus – and pulling it to serve him – combing its depths for names and traces of identities long since abandoned by their masters. So to enquire what marked the darkest period in George Smiley’s life was at best, the equivalent to searching for the darkest shade of blue in the bloody ocean.

             And besides, he might add, it’s none of your business.


End file.
